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Stop! Don’t dump your old mattress. It is against the law, and there are much better alternatives.

When it’s time for a new mattress, what do you do with the old one? Here’s a guide to proper mattress disposal.

After about 10 years your mattress should be replaced with a new mattress. Even a quality mattress, under normal wear and tear, will begin to lose support after this length of time. Proper mattress disposal may take a little planning but the payoff is in the benefits to the environment. Far too many mattresses end up in landfills or on the side of the road. With a little research you will find that there are more eco-friendly ways to dispose of your mattress.

The first thing you can do when is contact the store where you bought the mattress. Furniture stores and mattress outlets sometimes offer mattress disposal at no cost. They either will pick up the old mattress when the new one is delivered or schedule another date. However, it is a good idea to ask the vendor whether their policy is to take the old mattresses to a recycling center. In many cases furniture stores simply take the mattresses to a landfill; which is what you are trying to avoid.

Another alternative when you buy a new mattress is to sell or give away the old mattress. Put out the word that you have a good quality used mattress available. Take out an ad in the local newspaper or online classifieds. There are people who look for used mattress to either recycle or rebuild. You can consider leaving the mattress curbside in hopes someone will drive by and pick it up for this purpose. However, your city may have regulations against this so it is best check first.

Donating to a charity is another eco-friendly mattress disposal option. Contact charities in your area to see if they accept used mattresses. Charities in some municipalities have restricted the types of donations they will take. Old mattress can contain bugs, dust mites and bodily fluids like perspiration, so it is best to check to see if they are accepted. Some charitable organizations do have the facilities to properly sanitize used mattresses for reuse.

If none of these options work for you, try looking for creative ways the mattress can be repurposed. The most environmentally conscious way to dispose of your mattress is to recycle it. You can do this yourself by dismantling the mattress and making use of its parts. For instance the foam can be cut into pieces and made into pillows for your new mattress or other furniture in your home. If you enjoy sewing, the cloth can be used to make clothing or for other crafting projects. Junk yards will sometimes buy coils and other salvage pieces from your mattress.

Recycling centers across the country can also be helpful with a proper disposal of your mattress. They will pick up your old mattress for a fee depending on the size of your mattress. The mattress is broken down to the bare bones and the pieces are separated for various uses. Even the wood from the frame can be shredded for wood chips or cut into small pieces for other uses.

Whether you choose to donate, recycle or reuse the old mattress, your effort benefits the environment. Knowing this, you can enjoy your new mattress feeling good about the method you have chosen for proper disposal of your old mattress.

Did we miss any good methods? How did you get rid of your last mattress? Leave a comment!

When you are shopping for a new mattress and looking at all of your options, one of the comparisons that will surely make at some point is a latex mattress vs. TempurPedic memory foam. You’ve probably already seen one of the top ranking articles on Google that makes it sound like TempurPedic mattresses are hot, wear out after a few years, and are somehow toxic. But notice that the article is written by someone selling organic latex mattresses. I would think that in general, there is probably an incentive to promote what a company sells in comparison to a brand that it doesn’t carry. Here are some facts about TempurPedic mattresses:

TempurPedic uses a type of memory foam that was originally invented by NASA scientists as a pressure absorbing material for astronauts during liftoff. A Swedish company licensed and developed the foam for use as a mattress in the 1990s, which eventually became the TempurPedic company you know today. They have continued developing the material ever since.

There’s no question that TempurPedic mattresses are expensive. But I have personally owned one for almost 10 years, and it is still exactly as good as it was when I originally purchased it. It was the best mattress purchase I have ever made, and well worth the money I spent buying it at full retail. TempurPedic says that a 2010 Blackstone Group Tempur-Pedic Owners Study showed that 9 out of 10 people who bought one of their mattresses would buy one again. (Although they don’t specify how long after the purchase they said that.) And they also claim that 94 percent of owners are satisfied with their purchase.

With all that said, I am not saying that latex mattresses aren’t any good. In fact, latex mattresses have quite a few advantages of their own. One issue you have to consider, however, is that TempurPedic is one brand, using its own memory foam. Latex mattresses come in many forms, from many different manufacturers.

You might buy a high quality latex mattress that you like better than a TempurPedic, or a crappy cheap one that you think is worse than any mattress you’ve ever slept on. There are many other types of memory foam, and many brands of memory foam mattresses. So don’t say “TempurPedic” unless you are referring to that specific brand. There are plenty of cheap and terrible memory foam mattresses out there that are other brands.

There’s a lot of work you’ll have to do as a consumer to figure out if you are getting your money’s worth with a latex mattress. That’s because there are a ton of different variables with a latex mattress, and any of them can affect the price, the longevity, the comfort level, the quality of materials and more.

Natural latex is a product that comes from a rubber tree. A mattress can be made of natural latex, or synthetic latex, or a blend of the two. If you are looking for a high end, “natural” option for your bed, then latex is going to be a good way to go. You can buy a completely organic, natural latex mattress. Natural latex will last for many years, and many of the top organic natural latex mattress brands have up to a 20 year warranty.

That being said, there are plenty of blended latex mattresses that are still very high quality mattresses, that are very comfortable. Buying 100 percent “natural latex” guarantees that your price is going to be higher, but it doesn’t guarantee the highest level of comfort. Why? Because you still have to consider the other materials in the mattress, how much latex is being used, where the latex layers are in the mattress, which process was used to make the latex, etc.

What you have to be careful with is that many mattresses are called latex, but it’s rare to find a mattress that is just one big slab of 100 percent latex rubber. Latex mattresses are actually made of lots of different materials. So you don’t know how much latex rubber is actually part of the mattress without checking. It might just be a thin layer at the top of the mattress, instead of being part of the core. Many latex mattresses are part latex, and part memory foam.

If you are still considering the type of mattress you want to buy and are looking at latex, you’ve probably heard the term “Talalay Latex” by now. What does that mean? Is it a brand? Is it a variety of latex? Actually, it’s neither. It’s a process used to make the latex into solid pieces of foam rubber. The process was developed in the 1940s by three guys with the last name Talalay, so it is named after them.

But first, let’s start with latex rubber itself. Latex rubber is a natural product that comes from the sap of rubber trees. Rubber trees are grown on plantations in places like South America and Malaysia, and they typically make rubber for up to 30 years. To tap the latex, someone will remove strips of bark, which causes the tree to drip the liquid latex that has to then be processed for whatever its end use will be.

For mattresses, which consist of very large pieces of latex foam rubber, there are two main processes. There is the Dunlop process, and the Talalay process.

The Dunlop process is a pretty simple process, where the rubber can settle in the mold and where the resulting material that comes out might be firmer on one side than the other. The material in general will also have an overall higher firmness. Dunlop material is also usually heavier.

With the Talalay process, the manufacturer will take liquid latex, put it into a mold where all air is vacuumed out. Then the mold is frozen to stabilize the molded material, and injected with carbon dioxide, and then heated up so that the rubber becomes vulcanized and will hold its shape permanently.

With either method, the mold where you pour the latex rubber will have pins in it, which leaves air holes. You can vary the number of pins and the size of the pins to make the mattress perform differently.

There is a lot of additional room for changing the properties of the mattress using the Talalay process, so you can make it softer or firmer.

When you are using latex as the core of the mattress, either method is pretty suitable. But for the layer at the top of the mattress that you feel, you might want to look for Talalay.

Keep in mind that latex can either mean completely natural latex rubber that comes from rubber trees, or it can be a blend of natural and synthetic latex rubber (made from styrene butadiene), or it can be completely synthetic rubber. Completely natural rubber latex is the most expensive. Blends are common. Purely synthetic latex is typically on the low end on the cost scale.

If you’re looking for a relatively inexpensive luxury upgrade to your bed or mattress, consider getting yourself a high end set of bedsheets.

Luxury sheets can come in many forms, and it’s often difficult to judge what is going to be the most comfortable. Sheets come in different materials like cotton, cotton and polyester, polyester, bamboo, Egyptian cotton, cotton and linen, silk, satin, flannel, and so on.

Here’s a selection of bedsheets that some would consider the best sheets that money can buy.

Written up in GQ Magazine and other blogs devoted to luxury items, Olatz makes high end cotton and linen sheets. We’re talking $800 for a single flat queen sized sheet, in some models. You can buy them at an Olatz store, or online.

If you’ve ever stayed at a fancy hotel like the Savoy in London or the Ritz in Paris, then you might have experienced these high end sheets from Frette. Established in France in the 1860s, Frette is a luxury brand with staying power. Thankfully, the sheets are relatively moderate in price. An entire king sized set of Egyptian cotton sheets is under $400 for some models.

Want to go completely high tech, and use the types of modern fabrics that have completely taken over sports for your bedding? Take a look at the Sheex brand. The manufacturer claims that they breathe 50 percent better than cotton, they transfer heat two times better, they are more durable, feel softer, and won’t wrinkle or shrink. A queen set of luxury performance sheets goes for around $199.

The best sheets don’t always have to be expensive at all. Good Housekeeping Magazine in its March 2012 issue chose a 450 thread count sheet set from The Company Store as the best sateen sheets on the market. A set of king sheets with two pillowcases goes for around $237.

Written up in Real Simple magazine and picked as one of their top choices for the best bed sheets are these sheets from Sferra. Sferra is an Italian brand launched in Venice in 1891, and its sheets have been used in the Vatican and the White House, and by many celebrities, according to the manufacturer. A queen set will cost you just over $500.

Several blogs have written up the $2,400 bespoke Egyptian cotton sheets from Charlotte Thomas, a boutique luxury bedding brand in the UK. But I couldn’t find any way to buy them in the United States, or a manufacturer photo.

D. Porthault is a luxury brand out of Paris, started in the 1920s. Primarily available as very colorful, “girly” types of linens, a king sheet set goes in the range of around $1,900. These sheets are so expensive that they don’t even tell you the thread count, or even give you details about the fabric!

Sefte is an American luxury brand, but the sheets they make are woven in Italy, and hand embroidered by artisans in Vietnam. They sell for a reasonable $585 per queen set. They are 100 percent organic cotton, in a 400 thread count percale.

Esquire magazine listed Thomas Lee sheets as one of their top picks in the pima cotton sheet category. Thomas Lee only sells direct and keeps prices low. A queen set will cost $199, with a true 500 thread count in the percale style.

It wasn’t long ago that memory foam mattresses like the TempurPedic were at the very top when it came to mattress comfort technology. NASA developed the original technology for viscoelastic memory foam to cushion and support astronauts during blastoff.

In the early 1990s that NASA developed technology became available for commercial products. A Swedish company acquired the rights from NASA to this technology, and then perfected it. This led to the TempurPedic brand, which pretty much dominated the memory foam market for almost two decades.

Gel memory foam has more of an earth-based origin. It was developed in the hospital bed / medical setting, to reduce pressure points for bedridden patients. It became quickly clear that the same technology could be tweaked to make an ideal regular mattress for consumers at home, and mattress manufacturers begin to introduce various gel memory foam models.

Gel memory foam mattresses really started to take off in 2011 with the introduction of the Serta iComfort gel mattress in 2011. Serta is one of the big names in mattresses, with wide distribution, making gel memory foam available just about everywhere. And the iComfort line has been a huge hit, launching Serta into the top selling position in the market in 2011.

The only real disadvantage of regular viscoelastic memory foam mattresses is that they can sometimes feel hotter to some people. Gel memory foam mattresses reportedly solve this issue.

Some argue that there is very little difference between gel memory foam and regular memory foam. And let’s face it, traditional memory foam gets very high customer satisfaction ratings. The latest 2012 Consumer Reports guide to mattresses wrote that TempurPedic had the highest satisfaction rating of all types of mattresses, including memory foam and traditional innerspring.

But don’t write off gel memory foam as a gimmick just yet! They don’t tend to use something in a medical setting unless it works.

Many of the gel memory foam mattresses use the same gels developed for hospital beds to avoid or overcome bedsores and alleviate pain from pressure points. Some of them even use a patented “buckling column gel” system that must be licensed out to a mattress manufacturer.

Whether you go with a traditional memory foam mattress or a gel memory foam, one thing you can look forward to is a longer mattress life. Both types of mattresses tend to outlast innerspring mattresses, which typically wear out in 5 to 7 years. Many memory foam brands have 20 year warranties. (My own standard TempurPedic is still going strong after a full decade. I’ve passed it down to my kid because we went from Queen to King and bought an Intellibed gel.)

Got an opinion? Leave a comment and share it. Feel free to mention brands that you like or dislike!